[Freeciv-Dev] Re: civ3's answer to smallpox

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 10:39:00AM -0400, Ross W. Wetmore wrote:
> I missed Arien's earlier post so will piggyback on Renier.
> 
> Again ICS doesn't work and Arien's "faster" analysis is wrong because ...
> 
> Assume you start with a size 1 city with food +2, prod +4 which *really*
> weights things in favour of ICS (double average production).

OK.

> You will generate a new settler every 10 turns, and if your 2nd city is
> as productive and not that far away it will take 30 turns or so to get
> 4 cities plus some noise (up to 10 more turns) to get them all to size 2.
> During this period you are totally defenceless :-).

Note that I was discussing the standard setup here, in which you are
unlikely to meet anyone the first 50 turns or so. Most games are
played with generator 2 or 3 which makes it even more unlikely.

> It takes 10+15 turns to let the original city grow to size 3, and 5 more
> to rapture it to size 8.

OK, I admit, I've never tried it.  The reason being that rapture, too,
is 4 times as attractive with 4 times as many cities.  (And rapture
used to start at size 5, but this is no longer the case.)

> During this period the city can produce military
> defence and/or unhappiness improvements like temples, or productivity
> enhancements like marketplaces.

Yes, this becomes interesting at that point.

> And at this point vertical growth is moving at 1 per turn,

??

> while horizontal
> growth still takes 10 turns per city.

You don't grow cities, you build settlers.  I don't follow.

> Moreover, vertical growth can add
> 1.5 equivalent trade/production per turn with somthing like marketplace, 
> 2 equivalents per turn with marketplace and bank, etc.

All those resources could have been a multitude of cities,
if settlers had been built instead.

> If you rearrange your workers to produce food +4 and prod +2, you can
> cut the 25 turns in half for the vertical growth.

Sorry for being dense, but which 25 turns?

> In advanced stages of the game, you can produce 1 settler per turn in a
> large city. 3 such cities can produce a new city that starts growing at 
> one per turn, every turn. I'll leave you to figure out the multiplicative
> factor in the exponential growth this has over despotic ICS :-).

The question is: how to reach those stages as early as possible.
If the answer is smallpox, there is no more room for such a city.

> So, ICS is only a useful strategy in the early stages of the game where
> tech has not progressed enough to take advantage of other growth means.

No doubt about that.  But as I said, the game is usually decided in that
early stage.

> If your game never moves beyond a despotic bloodbath, it may be the only
> winning strategy, but that is up to the players to decide :-).

Yes, by avoiding smallpox-inducing settings.  Otherwise, you have to go
by a code of honour (agree not to use smallpox) or a code of dishonour
(only play much weaker players so you can crush them using any strategy
you like).
 
> ICS may be exponential, but it is an inefficient or low base rate that it
> starts from.

I must admit that rapture from size 3 changes the equation, but it
isn't clear to me how you make growing a city a better investment of
time and shields than pumping out size 1 cities.

> Cheers,
> RossW

-- 
Reinier